Refining of petroleum products to produce gasoline and other olefinic products can result in some of the processing units producing significant secondary byproducts, most notably carbonatious deposits or coke. In particular, fired tubular furnace reactors utilizing process reactor tubes, such as resid hydrotreaters, atmospheric towers, vacuum towers, FCC main fractionators, coker main fractionators, and the like form deposits of coke byproducts on the inside of the reactors and on the process tubes of the reactors. The coke deposits inhibit effective neat transfer, thereby resulting in inefficient processes.
For instance, atmospheric towers used with resid hydrotreaters have a typical operating cycle which includes declining capacity through the third year and ultimate shutdown of the atmospheric tower due to coke formations and large pieces of coke plugging the outlet lines for the tower bottoms. Management of the coke is critical to efficiency and, ultimately, the turnaround cycle of the atmospheric tower.
Therefore, it is an object of the invention to more easily remove coke formed in the reactor units, thereby allowing the reactor unit to run more of for a longer period of time.
Another object of the invention is to prevent large pieces of coke from clogging, the outlet lines for the tower bottoms.
Another object of the present invention is to catch and remove large pieces of coke spalling off the interior components of the reactor unit.
The objects of the invention are readily realized by the following apparatus.